Effective employee engagement – The key to making things happen

By Pradeepa Kekulawala

A frequent dilemma of business leaders is how to get the optimum results out of employees who are recruited. What makes employees “tick” in organisations and make them give their best towards the achievement of organisational objectives is a question that eludes a proper answer in many organisations and is a challenge to many.

At times the friction between CEOs and their HR heads is a result of misunderstanding as to how employees produce results. More often than not CEOs are under the misguided conception that if the “package is right” and a “pleasant” working environment is created, employees must perform. If they do not, it becomes a so-called “problem of HR”.

On the other hand, many HR professionals think mistakenly that if an employee is inducted into the organisation positively and if the job description Key Result Areas (KRAs) and measurement tools are specified and agreed together with the classic motivational factors thrown in, an employee ought to perform.

But this does not happen – as many organisations have learnt to their cost and dismay. ‘Why does this happen?’ is the ‘million dollar’ question! The answer is that the employees concerned are not ‘engaged’ in their jobs effectively or not engaged at all. Therefore effective employee engagement is the answer.

What is employee engagement?

An engaged employee is one who is fully involved in the job, one who is whole heartedly enthusiastic about his/her job and one who is always ready for action towards furthering organisational goals.

To clarify further, engagement is the positive emotional attachment to one’s job, the organisation and its people/colleagues, which influences and enhances the performance and productivity at work. It must be stressed here that engagement is not motivation at work or job satisfaction. It is not even simply working in a ‘people are our greatest asset’ culture or a performance-driven climate.

It is the “heightened level of ownership for benefit of the internal and external customers” (Schmidt – 1993, Mayer & Allen – 1991).

Here, the internal customer is the interconnected organisation structure, its people and their KRAs in a holistic sense, while the external customer is the buyer of goods and services of the organisation, the recipient of your output in whatever context who provides your ‘bread and butter’ and/or who is the reason for the existence of any organisation – business or otherwise. For the purpose of this article, a profit making business organisation context is adopted.

Employee engagement, however, is easily said than achieved. Even Maslow (1943) in his ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ did not venture out to specify creating emotional attachment to, and involvement in, the organisation in a context of engagement.

In his times the motivation of an individual was the key which was the foundation for his motivational factors. Therefore, it becomes incumbent on an organisation’s human resource or HR department to facilitate employee engagement. In fact this becomes their first, second and the third priority, without exaggeration!

HR’s role in engagement

Simply laid on the table, the HR fraternity in an organisation must facilitate the emotional attachment of people to their respective jobs, ensure their positive involvement in the job and lead the change and transformation process therein towards this end.

Emotional attachment is passion; being passionate about one’s job and its deliverables. As in a marriage or relationship between two people, when there is absence of passion there is no emotional attachment, resulting in strained or broken relationships.

Involvement in one’s job is a direct outcome of empowerment. An empowered employee is one who is recognised as competent to perform his/her job, one who is given the freedom to perform that job with minimum or no supervision – just like issuing a licence to drive.

To achieve and sustain the above, the HR fraternity has to become a business partner; not by just lip service but through strategic alignment with the business – its strategy and charted course. To assume this change of leadership role, the HR team of an organisation must understand the dynamics of engagement, the pitfalls and yardsticks of measurement.

(The writer is an Executive Committee Member of the Association of HR Professionals and a Director and Lead Facilitator of The Talent Gallery.)

The following would be useful tips to practitioners of HRD:

Wayne Smith in 2009 developed an employee engagement model which was called the ‘6Cs –Employee Engagement Model,’ where six crucial factors were identified as those which would give birth and nurture passion and involvement – employee emotional attachment in a job:

nContent – Whether the body volume and nature of the work that one is supposed to execute and what is expected as deliverables (with clear measurements) match the person profile specified for the job and that the person recruited meets the specifications. Whether the person knows what is expected of him/her and whether the content is manageable.

nCoping – Whether an employee can cope with the job he has to perform and its demands. Has he/she been given the right tools, the right technology, the necessary training if relevant and have the required risk and disaster mitigation mechanisms been put in place?

nCompensation – The manner in which an employee is rewarded and recognised for his output – salary and other benefits and perks performance based incentives both cash and non cash. The total package.

nCommunity – Whether the people with whom an employee performs his/her job are supportive and complement his performance and whether it is essentially a collaborative environment.

nCongruence – Refers to the overlapping or matching of an individual’s personal goals with regard to career progress, life and other value needs with the organisational goals or charted course.

nCareer – Whether career progression and enhancement plus growth opportunities are available in the organisation or a particular department.

It is empirically established that it is the line managers who have the biggest impact on employee engagement or disengagement as they can virtually kill or build engagement. The organisational leadership may set the tone and pace and attempt to bring about engagement, but it is the line or divisional managers who drive the organisation and their philosophy, approach and conduct is instrumental in determining whether employees are effectively engaged or not.

The HR fraternity must come to the fore and rescue here as it is their job to ensure that the ‘6 Cs’ are developed, receive organisational acceptance, established, practiced, nurtured and sustained amidst cacophony of diverse corporate priorities.

The Gallop Organisation developed a tool to determine and measurer the level of employee engagement. They called it the ‘12Qs to Measure Employee Engagement’ and are shared below with the readers. This comes in the form of a questionnaire to the employees and can be marked against a predetermined scale of choice.

Gallop’s 12Qs to measure employee engagement

nDo you know what is expected of you at work?

nDo you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?

nAt work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?

nIn the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?

nDoes your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?

nIs there someone at work who encourages your development?

nAt work, do your opinions seem to count?

nDoes the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?

nAre your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?

nDo you have a best friend at work?

nIn the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?

nIn the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

Effective engagement is not rocket science. Rather it is a process once set in motion and established that would take multiple forms of being a skill and art in the hands of HR professionals and a way of life in organisations. Organisations which have ‘gone beyond’ traditional growth and success measurements and who have made indelible marks in society are those with effectively engaged employees both locally and globally.

From an HR practitioner’s point of view, a supportive leadership with high Emotional Quotient (EQ) has to be the prayer and call to propel the process of engagement as opposed to boardrooms full of high IQ scores – a thing of the past and recipe for disaster!